Mali is one of the poorest countries in the world. It is part of
the Sahel, an arid region south of the Sahara subject to severe droughts. Rural
families depend on the labour of all members, including children, to survive.

Poverty acts as a determinant of educational chances at several
levels. State poverty means that although education takes up 24% of Mali's
budget, this provides schooling for less than half the children 1.
Primary school enrolment rates for 1993-7 were 30% for boys and 19% for girls,
compared to 61% and 55% for all sub-Saharan Africa2. Within Mali
itself there are further inequalities: city children are much more likely to go
to school than those in rural areas, and poorer districts have the lowest
attendance. Finally, poverty limits educational chances at household level: in
any district, children of poorer families are less likely to attend school.

The people of Mali experience a type of rural poverty that is
common in much of sub-Saharan Africa, but exists in the Sahel in an extreme
form. Villages are far apart, and transport between them hardly exists, meaning
children growing up in the Sahel are effectively isolated from anything outside
their village. Can anything can be done to help village children attend school?

Save the Children's experiment

Save the Children has worked in the northern district of
Douentza, one of the poorest in Mali, since the severe droughts of the mid '80s.
Within Douentza only 8% of children are in school. Douentza town is a centre of
public facilities for surrounding villages, with government offices, a hospital,
three primary schools and a secondary school. The cercle, or administrative
district, has 255 villages, but only seventeen have schools3. For
village children, 'going to school' means being sent to lodge with strangers in
town. The lodging child is often treated as free labour, expected to work harder
than other children of the household and given less to eat. Most village
families, however, cannot even afford the cost of sending a child to lodge.

Box 1: The opening

The community has gathered to watch car-loads of city people
coming to their village. Monsieur le President of the newly formed school
committee leads the guests to the two-roomed building. Inside, the classrooms
are cool, a shaded space in this fierce climate. The villagers press in close.
It was the men themselves who cut the stones, the women and children who carried
sand and water for the mortar. The furnishing is sparse but functional; a
blackboard, a table, desks. The Save the Children animateur who has worked with
the villagers has struggled to keep to a minimum the items brought in from
outside, while the villagers have bargained hard for what they need. The
speeches begin.

In the capital city of Bamako people who have never heard of
Koubwel Koundia watch on the weekend news. What makes it news is not the event
but the potential. For the first time in history this village has a school. If
they can do it, why not others?

Save the Children realised that without a school education
children have little chance of escape from rural poverty. The staff lacked
education sector experience, but this was balanced by considerable understanding
of the conditions of rural poverty. They set out:

· to understand what
stops village children getting to school· to
experiment with ways round the problems.

Staff see the schools project as part of a wider set of
activities intended to strengthen children's resilience in the face of poverty.
Their starting point was thus to consider questions of schooling as they are
experienced by villagers, both children and adults, rather than from the
perspective of education officials or professionals.

They were also experimenting with a methodology. Would this
bottom-up way of working give insights into how schooling could be made more
accessible? And could an international agency facilitate changes in local
structures (both governmental and communities) to improve children's educational
chances?

A village view of children's work To consider the relationship
between children's work, parental attitudes and schooling. Save the Children
commissioned a study into patterns and perceptions of children's work in two
rural districts (one being Douentza) and one peri-urban. The study confirmed
what is obvious to most observers: 85% of 7 year olds in Douentza district carry
serious work responsibilities, occupying on average 6 hours+ a day (with girls
working significantly longer hours than boys.) A quarter of households said that
they could not manage without the children's contribution. But it also made
clear that the primary consideration in the minds of parents, even very poor
ones, was the educational value of work: 'Children's work is perceived as a
process of socialisation, progressively initiating children into work and
transmitting skills that will enable them to support themselves and their
parents and contribute to the community.' Parents expressed this in many ways:

The most important thing one can do for a
child is to teach him or her to work.' 'Death can overcome the parents at any
time; that's why it is essential to train children young to do the work of the
parents'.

Box 2: Growing up in Mopti and Duentza

The regional town of Mopti is seven hours drive north of the
capital city, on the banks of the Niger river. As the seasons change, herds of
cattle are moved large distances in search of fresh grazing. Everywhere children
can be seen taking serious responsibilities from an early age, herding animals,
fishing, helping to move home, manoeuvring narrow boats through the flooded
areas.

Douentza, a traditional town of mud bricks, lies several hours
further to the north east. The many children who attend no kind of school are
busy with the work they do for their families, fetching water, minding younger
children, working in the market. At the other end of town the better-off
families live in compounds where goats are tethered, chickens scratch, and young
girls help their mothers pound grain and prepare food.

'Our daughters are married at 13 or 14 years.
If they haven't learnt all the work of the household when they are young, how
will they manage?'

When asked the reasons for a child not working, a common answer
was 'the negligence of parents.' In other words, only parents who did not have
their children's best interests at heart would let them grow up without work
responsibilities.

Children too accept the necessity and value of work. Among those
surveyed there were few instances of oppressive work conditions or abusive
punishments. Two thirds said they liked their work 'a lot,' and only a
negligible percentage said 'not at all'. Perhaps this is because children learn
by doing tasks with obvious utility, for which they win approval: 'We work to
have the blessing of our parents.' They can move around and be active, they are
taught by familiar people, using a language they understand, and are given
considerable responsibility - 74% of the children work most of the time without
adult supervision.

But the occupations for which children are trained through work
are those of their parents, and over 70% of both children and adults would
prefer some other future, to which only school-going could give access.

What would make it possible for village children to go to
school?

School attendance and family work are not seen as mutually
exclusive. Villagers want for their children what only school can offer, but
schooling will not be an option for most village children unless it is set up in
a way that accommodates village life.

Of children who had never been to school, 30% said this was
because there was no school in the village, 19% that they had too much work at
home, 18% that their parents lacked the means to send them, 27% that their
parents did not want to send them, and 32% gave other reasons. In a context
where sending children to school means sending them away, almost all of these
answers may amount to the same thing - schools are too distant. If the school is
within walking distance, children who attend can still spend several hours a day
working as part of the family and the family does not have to incur the cost of
sending them to lodge.

Villagers defined a feasible distance from school as one that a
young child can walk twice a day (coming home for food at midday.) That means a
school in each village or each cluster of villages. Is it realistic to think
this could happen? It is an issue for children throughout rural Africa, and the
Sahel's sparse population and poverty present probably the most difficult
contexts in which to attempt to tackle it.

Beyond the question of resources there are difficulties with the
education system itself. Interviews with teachers and officials during Save the
Children's initial study of the Mopti region gave a consistently inflexible
message: the school system exists in a particular form. Children must fit into
the system, or they don't go to school. The idea of modifying the system to take
account of rural conditions does not arise6. Teachers must be urban
trained (from an Ecole Normale, teacher training college).
Only schools with a certain quality of building are recognised7. All
children must attend for the same number of hours, regardless of distance and
their work responsibilities.

For more village children to attend school requires not only
tackling resources issues, but negotiating flexibility within the system.

Will children benefit from going to school?

For village parents, sending children to school is a gamble:
'Even if all the children could go to school, it's not certain they would
all succeed.' Success means eventually being able to earn a
living in some other way. If this happens the family as a whole may be
economically more secure. Children who go to school and drop out after a few
years, however, may be in a worse position than those who never went. Both in
terms of skills and motivation, they may be less prepared to earn a living in
the only way now left to them.

'Our education system is ill'said a
teacher from a Douentza town school, and his colleagues agreed the education
being given today is sub-standard, inferior to the schooling they themselves
received. Schools often have dilapidated buildings and few teaching materials,
and it is years since most teachers had refresher training. They complained of
lack of consistency in government policies and a lack of understanding of the
stresses they are under. The first year teacher, for example, teaches nine hours
a day, in two sessions of seventy children.

Within existing resource constraints, however, there are still
choices. Save the Children staffs own observations went beyond those of the
teachers to focus on the children's experience. Teaching is in French, which the
children do not understand. They are taught by rote, with no liveliness or
active participation. The teachers' style is typically harsh; children are
visibly nervous.

The parent quoted above was being over-polite: the
majorityof school children fail. In Douentza schools, only
a quarter of the children who started in year one are still coming to school
after four years. The others have dropped out without having reached functional
literacy. The biggest drop out is in year one. It does not take children or
parents long to decide that staying in school will serve no useful purpose
8.

There is little point trying to get village children into school
unless something radical is done to improve what happens in schools. Accepting
that almost any improvement would require extra resources, the challenge was to
work out the minimum level: that is. the critical changes needed to make school
learning sufficiently effective for it to be worth village children attending.
The two selected were:

·Language: the teaching for the first few years should be in
a language the children understand, preferably the mother tongue, with a gradual
introduction to French.

·Child-sensitive learning
methods: children should be actively engaged, rather than
passively repeating. They should be encouraged, and not fear their
teachers.

These are recognised internationally as key factors in effective
learning. In the context of Malian rural schools they represent radical changes.

Language, the critical factor

In Mali, as elsewhere, a few innovative educationalists within
the state system have been convinced of the benefits of using children's mother
tongue for the first introduction to literacy9. But they remain a
minority voice.

Several objections are raised. First, that there are hundreds of
languages in Mali, and the education system would never have the resources to
support teaching in all of them. But a national body called DNAFLA (which
supports literacy for adults using mother tongues), together with IPN, the
Institut Pedagogic National(which deals with curricula and
methodology in schools) have identified a modest number of languages which would
make literacy learning in a known language accessible to the majority of
Malians. These include the two dominant language groups of Douentza district,
the Dogon and the Peulh10.

A second objection is that it is impossible to implement mother
tongue teaching in town schools where children of many languages study in the
same class. But in villages this problem does not arise as most villages are
composed of people who share a language.

The most deeply felt resistance comes from those who feel that
French is the only suitable language for schooling. The point of going to school
is to get a job, and for this French will be needed. Experimental primary
schools outside the state system have been successful in getting children to
read in their own languages, but unsuccessful in getting them places in
secondary school because they do not know French11.

A pioneering alternative curriculum, the PedagogConvergente, seeks to avoid the problems of both the French-only
and the mother-tongue-only systems. For the first years teaching is in the local
language. French is introduced slowly as a foreign language. Once children are
confidently literate in their own language, the balance changes, bringing pupils
to nationally expected levels, in French, by the end of
year 6, and thus enabling them to continue to secondary school. The claim is
that children can achieve this level because they learn much faster (by
understanding what they are learning) and that the wastage of the French-only
system is avoided.

The PedagogConvergentehas been used in
a few schools only. Headteachers in Douentza district had never heard of it, and
were resistant. While the state theoretically allows it, it has allocated few
resources for implementation. Save the Children concluded for a village school
to be set up using the PedagogConvergente, in the
current Malian context, there would need to be outside agency involvement.

The Response

Testing a new approach

Save the Children's study of village life and the school system
led it conclude:

Village communitieswant their children to
go to school, but this would be realistic only if schools:

· are within a
child's walking distance· are responsive to
village conditions, including children's work· can offer effective teaching, starting in local
languages.

The state education system

· lacks resources to
provide new village schools· is inflexible
and unresponsive to changes needed to make schooling appropriate for village
children· permits the use of local
languages, but this is rarely implemented.

Save the Children decided to act as 'broker' between the two
parties. They took as a starting point lessons from Save the Children's
international experience of education collaboration both with villages and the
state system [see notes at the beginning of the chapter] and also from other
NGOs/International NGOs in Mali. Two International NGOs, World Education and
Save the Children (USA), have been active in community schools for some years
and have significant programmes. Certain features of the approach that Save the
Children has taken are markedly different from both of these:

· The Save the
Children approach is unique in responding to the specific conditions of remote
Sahel communities, where the difficulties of survival and economic vulnerability
are most extreme.

· Save the Children's project
was planned to combine a close relationship with the community with a potential
for scaling up within the state system. It is the first attempt to seek
appropriate innovation within the state system for the needs of
villagers.

Because Save the Children's approach grew out of an involvement
with the people of Douentza that included concerns for health, food security and
credit, there is a wider view of how village schools could fit into patterns of
village life, and a wider range of strategies for the project's community
workers to draw on when helping villagers establish and sustain
schools12.

It is worth noting that the experiment is taking place in a
context of highly centralised decision making. Whilst there is talk of
'deconcentration', key decisions on policy, budgets, school
standards and teacher employment still lie with the central Ministry. In other
African countries the move to decentralisation has created a positive 'space'
for experimentation that might involve village communities more in questions of
schooling. In Mali this is not the case13.

Though the project itself is small, its potential relevance is
huge. If it succeeds in bringing effective education to villages that have had
no school, and if Save the Children as an international NGO can successfully
carry the initiating role while leaving ownership in local hands (villagers and
the state), this could open up possibilities for extending village schooling in
other parts of rural Africa. This would require extra resourcing, but if the
method works, donors may be willing to provide it.

Getting going

With an understanding of the issues and a decision on
methodology made, the Douentza village schools project moved fast:

Between January and September 1997 the schools were set up
and opened:

· In January Save the Children
set up a consultation process with government, donors, NGOs. and village
communities around Douentza, and allocated staff roles. To keep the project cost
effective, there was only one full-timer, an experienced community 'animateur
from the credit programme. No education specialist would be employed; state
education professionals would provide inputs on curricula and methodology.

· By March the plan was
formulated, the project officer had gone on a month's training on education
issues from a Malian NGO14, the participation of state education
professionals had been negotiated, permission taken from provincial and local
officials. A feasibility study was undertaken and two villages were identified
that were keen to take part in the pilot phase, one in each of the main language
groups in the Douentza area, Dogon and Fulfulde15.

· In April work began in the
villages. School committees were formed and trained, teachers selected. The
community agreed financial arrangements they thought they could sustain and
principles for allocating school places. The community undertook to build two
classrooms the first year, and a new one each year until the school had all six
years of a primary school.

· In Douentza and Mopti
education officials were sceptical that untrained village teachers could achieve
an adequate level or that things would be ready to start in that school year.
But the villagers were determined, and Save the Children staff were inspired by
their enthusiasm to push the pace.

· By June two classrooms had
been built in both villages.

· By September the teachers had
received their first six weeks intensive training, and the first curriculum
workshop had been held. Led by professionals from the state system, and attended
by provincial and local officials, it made history by bringing in ordinary
villagers (the teachers-to-be, school committee members and parents) to adapt
the curriculum and materials to reflect village children's experience. Against
the disbelief of the officials, and to the immense satisfaction of the
villagers, the schools opened in October 1997.

By October 1998, both schools were still going
strong:

· Extra classes had been built,
there had been a second intake of children, more teachers trained, the
curriculum further developed, now with the input of children. The schools had
received a regular stream of interested visitors, who were impressed with the
eagerness and confidence of the children and the pride of the school committees.

· In Douentza district, official
attitudes had changed. The schools inspector had visited the schools and agreed
to register them.

· A momentum had begun outside
the project schools. Thirty new applications for village community schools had
been received by district education authorities16.

Save the Children staff themselves have balanced on a tightrope
between excitement at what has been unleashed, and nervousness that it might not
be sustained: 'It is very exciting and moving to witness the enthusiasm
and commitment of the communities to their schools', says a
discussion paper - which then goes on to list problem issues17. The
following sections consider some of these issues, and whether the results have
benefited children.

What kind of village?

It was assumed that the project could work only in a village
with a strong desire for a school, and where there was sufficient cohesion to
support a project requiring people to work together over a long period. There
would need to be an uncontested site for the school, and people willing to build
it. They would need people willing and capable of being trained as teachers.
Most villages have a handful of adults with primary or even secondary education.
To cover the full six years of primary school there would need to be at least
six potential teachers, plus other adults willing to take on the
responsibilities of a management committee. Finally, the parents would need to
be willing to, and economically capable of, making contributions to support the
teacher. In both the pilot villages, the community had already made an attempt
to establish schools, unsupported by outsiders, and welcomed the chance to be
part of the project: 'We have been waiting to get our own school since the
first hours of independence.'

Why work in two languages?

In the village of Koubwel Koundia the language is Dogon, in
Deb it is Fulfulde18. Working with two language groups doubles the
complications of preparing curriculum materials and teacher training. But it has
strong advantages:

· It avoids the
danger of the project being seen to benefit one group, and offers good economies
of scale: materials prepared for two project schools make possible an expansion
of the methodology across villages in both groups.

· The project schools offer the
first local examples of mother tongue teaching, and depending on the results
officials will form opinions of whether this approach works. It is therefore
important to be able to compare effectiveness across at least two languages, to
show where certain outcomes may be specific to one language.

What does 'community participation' mean?

For the state, 'community participation' in schooling is usually
seen as a cost-saving device: villagers provide free labour to build schools,
and parents' contributions pay the teachers' salaries. The Douentza project
envisages the role of the community in a more fundamental way:

'Schools should belong to the community, then
they will last'

'Community involvement is fundamental and the spinal cord
upon which the community school experience rests'

'Community management of a school improves access and
quality of teaching whilst encouraging a demand for
education'

Save the Children staff recognised
that while the initiators of the project could set things up in a way that might
encourage this, internal village dynamics would determine the future of the
school. The outside facilitators would not wish to control those processes, but
they would need to understand them.

Box 3: Language, culture and schooling

The Peulh, whose language is Fulfulde, span the Sahel,
sharing a language and culture across the artificial borders that European
colonisers drew. In the Douentza area they are agro-pastoralists, living in
settled villages where they grow crops but also depending on animals. At certain
seasons some of the villagers move the animals to new grazing areas
19.

The village of Deb does not have a population large enough to
support a school of the kind envisaged in the project. Soon the school will need
to draw in children from nearby villages, but will they want to participate in a
project they were not involved in from the start, especially since there are
caste differences between the villages?

The Dogon are said to be among the oldest people in Mali.
They live along a line of rocky hills and access to water is a constant problem,
women and girls climb down what looks like a sheer rock face to get water in the
stream below, and climb back up again with the weight of a large bucket of water
balanced on their heads.

The village of Koubwel Koundia has exceptional cohesion, with a
popular chief who is himself school-educated. Villagers have worked
enthusiastically on each stage of the project, undeterred by their difficult
terrain - the building materials for the school were stones that had to be
broken with hand tools. But language is a complex issue. There are at least 70
Dogon languages, many mutually unintelligible. Among them, the Torosso language
has been selected by DNAFLA as the one best suited to be a common language among
the Dogon, and therefore their first language of literacy.

What processes lead to 'community ownership'?

Ownership rests with those who commit the major effort and
resources, and make the decisions. The villagers talk of 'our school', and feel
the pride of ownership and control. They have built it, but more significantly,
they take responsibility for running it.

The school management committee is elected by the whole village,
selects the teacher, decides pupil intake, negotiates with the whole community
what payment is to be made and how, and keeps accounts. A woman committee member
ensures that girls get equal representation in the school, which may include
negotiating with the girls' parents, and also that children with disabilities
are included20. There is a member responsible for 'education',
monitoring what is taught and how; another for the school environment, another
to sort out problems and areas of conflict.

'The management committees are the driving force behind
the community approach'said an external review of the project.
The Save the Children project officer has provided training in understanding the
new roles, and has worked to sort out initial problems. The committees cannot
work effectively without a consensus by the whole village:

'Social negotiation with all local actors
consists in arriving at an agreement about commitments made, consensus being
reached through awareness raising and animation activities: through village
general assemblies, small groups, village personalities and opinion
leaders'

Which children get school places?

The committee makes practical decisions, but within a framework
of collaboration negotiated with Save the Children. Save the Children considers
certain things non-negotiable: parents should contribute to paying teachers;
girls should receive equal numbers of places as boys; children with disabilities
should be included in school. Where these challenge traditional assumptions, an
element of persuasion comes into the picture. Save the Children commissioned a
group of musicians from Douentza to perform songs to try to encourage consensus
on these issues. In villages where little happens to vary the pattern of every
day, the arrival of the musical group draws the village together to listen.

People do not of course change their attitudes from hearing a
song. A degree of bargaining probably comes into the villagers' acceptance of
these 'messages'. But the external review felt that villagers now genuinely
supported most of the new ideas:

'A change of behaviour concerning the
education of their children is already discernible amongst the villagers. In
meetings they say, 'We regret the past."

Haw far should NGO support go?

An external review praised the way the project had set up and
supported the committees:

'The approach gives communities much more
freedom in the management of their schools, leads communities to have confidence
in themselves, encouraging them to commit themselves more
strongly.'

But it echoed the requests of the committees for more training,
particularly in those aspects which will become more relevant as the schools
press to be more centrally included in the state system. They will need to
conform to bureaucratic standards in relation to registering the ages of
children, school registers, formally agreed school rules, minutes of meetings,
etc. All of these require literacy skills, and raise the question of whether
committee members (or at least some of them) need to be literate.

Every 'solution' creates its own dilemmas. If committee members
must be literate, this limits the villagers' choice, cutting out people who
might have better ability at managing the schools as social institutions. While
the arguments for adult literacy provision are sound, the costs of the project
increase with each extra input. This makes it less easy to see the project as a
model for other villages.

The villagers are clear that the schools are 'theirs' but they
know they could not have got this far alone, and are anxious to bind Save the
Children in an ongoing relationship. Save the Children staff understand that,
but try not to take on responsibilities which will undermine village ownership.
Their refusal to get drawn in reflects no lack of desire to support villagers;
on the contrary, it comes from a strong conviction that they would undermine the
long term survival of the schools if they did21.

Box 4: Teachers' salaries when the rains fail

Each village community worked out what it considered feasible
for parents to contribute to teachers' pay. The amounts agreed are far less than
that paid by government for teachers, but they are rates the villages felt they
could sustain and village teachers were willing to accept.

The calculation did not allow for the effects of a particularly
bad drought, which struck the villages in the first year of the schools
operation. Parents were having to leave the villages in search of wild fruit;
how could they possibly pay for teachers? Perhaps just this year Save the
Children should contribute to teachers' salaries? This would help in the short
term, it would undermine the long term chances of the schools being viable.

At a meeting with Save the Children staff in November 1998, the
committee said that tolerance and patience was needed by the teachers until
things could be put on a better basis financially. The teachers reaffirmed their
dedication:

We teach in order to teach our children, not for the
remuneration. Our work is a patriotic commitment, and we cannot turn
back.

But they have to support themselves. The way forward? A number
of ideas emerged from the meeting:

· The committees
persuaded all households, not just parents, to contribute to teachers' costs.
This is a step forward for equity, for individual children will not be excluded
because their parents cannot pay.

· The committees
hope to extend this levy to the neighbouring villages whose children will be
attending the school.

Over the longer term one important issue is who should pay the
teachers? Save the Children in Mali is clear that it should not be the
International NGO, but should villagers have to bear this cost directly when
townspeople do not? 22 And what if particular parents cannot afford
their contribution - do the children drop out? Does this kind of 'cost sharing'
not undermine the central premise of the project, which is to give an equitable
chance of education to the poorest? 23 The logical future for the
village schools is to become part of the state system, with the state paying the
teachers. But is the state willing and able to take this on?

What role has the state system played in the pilot phase?

This is best seen in two parts. Specialists from the national
level have:

· provided the
curriculum framework· developed the
materials, incorporating inputs from curriculum workshops· trained the teachers.

Provincial and local officials have:

· participated in
events such as curriculum/training workshops· registered the schools· agreed to provide regular inspection and monitor
standards.

An early task was to find individuals at a senior level in the
education system who would be prepared to work with the project. Save the
Children has had strong collaboration from the Institut Pedagogic
Nationaleand the literacy agency, DNAFLA, particularly through
the participation of a senior IPN official, Bokary Sory Traorto whom much of
the credit for the success of the use of the PedagogConvergentegoes. But the decision to work with the
PedagogConvergentealso launched the project into
controversy:

'We were confronted by the reticence that
stems from the refusal of certain education officials to acknowledge the
PedagogConvergente.'

The project hinged on a small number of educationalists who
'have a kind of monopoly'of how to implement the new
approach, and who expected higher rates for running workshops than Save the
Children felt appropriate, since it was attempting to limit dependence on
outsiders for a process which it was hoped would eventually be seen as the
state's. But each side depended on the other, and compromises were reached. A
senior official said: Iam committed to supporting the processes
which the project has initiated, even if there aren't many resources.'

Does the state take 'ownership'?

Because Save the Children has put in the resources and is the
catalyst/facilitator of all developments, the project is perceived by the state
system as 'Save the Children's'. Save the Children aims, however, for a gradual
transference of ownership. Even though state officials have not initiated what
is happening, the way is open to them at any point to take a larger role.
Invitations are always given to events like workshops, and Save the Children
engages officials in ongoing dialogue about the project.

Responses are mixed. While the pilot schools have attracted
attention, this may be threatening to education officials rather than
encouraging. Though the new curriculum has approval from the national level,
provincial education officials and local teachers do not necessarily approve of
innovations. At the start of the project there was no real official support in
the region for using local languages, and strong resistance to the idea that
untrained villagers could become teachers, or that illiterate villagers might
have anything to contribute to designing a curriculum. Yet only a year after the
start of the project the schools inspector, who had been drawn somewhat
reluctantly into visiting the schools and was definitely opposed to the use of
local languages, ended up saying: 'Save the Children is on the right track
and we are therefore willing to collaborate in a process like
this.'

Finally, while officials' own status rises if their district or
region can show improvements from new developments in their area, they are
understandably nervous that they might be expected to pick up the bill. An
education adviser in Douentza praised the progress of the Save the Children
schools then added: 'My only anxiety is the question of funding for the
training of teachers in a context of poverty. I am not sure that the state would
be able to play its role.' This is a fundamental issue affecting
the future of the village schooling which is returned to in the concluding
section.

Box 5: Changing attitudes of state officials

Committee members and teachers took part in the workshop to
prepare the first year's curriculum, on the assumption that this would encourage
schooling that takes account of the realities of children's experience.

Officials from IPN and DNAFLA were willing to go along with the
experiment, but on the first day of the workshop the Regional Director of
Education expressed grave doubts about the basic principles on which the project
was based. This took Save the children staff by surprise, for there had been
months of earlier negotiations during which they had been assured of the
regional administration's support. Now Save the Children staff argued for going
ahead - the schools had been built, the villagers were waiting, they had been
assured by the educational experts at the national level that the plan was
possible. They appealed to the DNAFLA facilitator to confirm this. In some
discomfort at being thus challenged, he nevertheless repeated publicly the
assurance he had given Save the Children:

'It is definitely possible for us to prepare
in a week's workshop what is needed for the first term; after that we can take
more time over the rest. For myself, I am confident in the future of these
experimental community schools'.

The workshop went ahead; the schools began in September with the
first term's curriculum and materials ready. The schools were visited by many
people, who found the teachers managing their role competently. Save the
Children staff took courage and went one step further on the road to innovation.
In the second curriculum workshop in December four children from Douentza's
secondary school took part.

Can flexibility be retained?

While there are advantages in state ownership of the project
there are also dangers. If the state takes more responsibility, would it be
flexible enough to allow community management of schools and villager
participation in adapting the curriculum? Will it insist that only qualified
teachers can teach -thus cancelling the principle of relying on teachers from
the village, and in effect closing the schools?

Do children learn things they need to know?

The point of setting up village schools was to equip children to
face difficult life challenges. Are the schools likely to achieve this?

There is general agreement among both adults and children that
what the children are learning is useful: numeracy, literacy, the confidence to
express themselves. These skills are practised through a series of topics chosen
to draw on the children's existing life experience and future needs. Villager
participation in the curriculum workshops and village management of the schools
have been the mechanisms for adapting what was already in the new curriculum
more precisely to the context of these particular children, (for example, by
including in the language lessons dialogues in which villagers prepare to move
with the change in seasons to find grazing for the animals.) In these ways what
the children are offered appears to be an improvement on what they would have
got in a state school.

The principles of children's learning which are so clearly
demonstrated in village attitudes to children's work are put on one side when
children go to school. Once attitudes towards learning and school change there
are opportunities for better learning. Parents could be brought into the
classroom as resources for certain kinds of local knowledge. Children could be
taken out more, to learn from the local environment. There are opportunities to
make better links with other learning for life' activities that Save the
Children is involved with, such as health and HIV education, credit management
of accounts, etc24.

Are the teachers effective?

At the start of the project the Regional Director of Education
expressed a concern shared by many others (including senior Save the Children
staff):

'Iassure you that the teachers of
these two villages are not capable of taking on the required knowledge and
skills'

The teachers themselves appear to be undaunted: 'Since we
started teaching we have encountered no major difficulty. The children are very
enthusiastic with what they are busy learning in the school'.

Visitors to the schools (Malian and foreign, from Save the
Children, other NGOs and state officials) consistently confirm that the children
are eager, confident, and appear to be learning at a rate considered remarkable
by Malian standards. It is too soon for rigorous testing, but ad hoc tests
showed that after a year children were able to do things - read with
understanding and apply calculations beyond simple memorisation25 -
which many third year pupils in state schools cannot.

How has it been possible for less well trained teachers to
achieve what qualified teachers in state schools do not? The first factor is
motivation; the second, the methods they have been trained to use.

What motivates village teachers?

Though village teachers are paid far less that state school
teachers, their role is in many ways more satisfying. They gain status among
villagers, praise and encouragement from outsiders who visit. They have cash
income where before they may have had none, and they exchange work in
agriculture for work which recognises their level of education. The training
provides them with the stimulus of learning something new. Village teachers are
chosen by the community and live side by side with the children and their
parents, who will not be reticent in commenting if they think the teachers are
neglecting their duties. Together with other villagers the teachers feel a
responsibility not only to the children, but to themselves: 'We cannot let
ourselves fail as we have been chosen amongst many villages to host this
project.'

The state education adviser for Douentza acknowledged the
experience of the village schools had reminded him that 'University
training is not the only criterion for performance of a teacher. It's also
necessary to have high motivation and a love of ones profession.':Effective teaching relies on attitudes every bit as much as it does on
skills.

There is a natural tendency for these positive factors to apply
most strongly in the early years of the project, when the challenge and novelty
are greatest. Teaching has its repetitive sides; going through the curriculum
with a group of first year pupils may be less exciting the fourth or fifth time.
And there is the issue of pay. The initial aim in a project of this kind must be
to pay teachers sufficient to enable them to teach. Once that level is reached,
other questions will emerge. The more village teachers are brought into contact
with the state teachers, the more it is likely to weigh on them that they are
not paid adequately for what they do.

The experience of NGO-supported community school programmes
elsewhere suggests that in the overall conditions of poverty and inequality it
is virtually impossible to resolve these issues. Probably the most critical
factor is the continuing availability of committed and sensitive community
workers26. The role of the community worker is commonly understood as
redundant once things are set up. While the aim should be to reduce dependence,
complete withdrawal of outside facilitators may result in the collapse of what
has been built up. When new or difficult issues arise, if a community worker who
has an established relationship with the villagers is available to facilitate, a
great deal can be done to maintain morale, encourage realism about options, and
thereby to ensure the effective functioning of schools.

Language is the critical factor. Children understand what they
are learning, therefore they can learn27. This link is obvious to a
visiting educationalist, but is still a subject of controversy, and the
advocates of local language teaching have a way to go to convince the sceptics.
The testing point will come with the transition to French. And for this to be
achieved effectively, teachers will need to be trained in new skills.

The PedagogConvergentelays stress not
only on the fact that the language is familiar, but also on emotional factors -
the need for encouragement, and an absence of fear - and cognitive
processes28. The village teachers have taken on board principles
about teacher-child relationships and learning methods that contrast strongly
with the kind of teaching they experienced as children. Teachers give lessons
around a series of dialogues, and they know that if they take the children
through all the dialogues, following all the steps, the children will learn to
read.

As inexperienced teachers, they tend to carry out the dialogues
to the letter, which carries the danger that this will become a system as rigid
as the old one. It is, however, effective, and it has the advantage that it
renders inexperience less of an issue.

The methods work - but why?

A reason for the teachers' high morale is that they have the
reward of seeing children learn. In other words, their training has equipped
them with methods that work. What elements of the PedagogConvergentehave contributed to this?

The curriculum and teacher training processes have been led by
state education professionals. In other words, the state itself has pioneered a
methodology capable of turning unqualified villagers into effective teachers.
Can the system make the other adaptations needed to back its own innovators, and
let them use their competence to extend schools to other villages, and beyond
that, to improving teaching for allMalian children?

Box 6: Learning to read through understanding

The steps the teachers are trained to follow for each
dialogue, using the PedagogConvergente method:

· show the story
through pictures

· say the dialogue several
times, with the pictures, while the children listen, try to remember, but don't
repeat

· choose children to take roles
and act the dialogue

· show them the written
dialogue, and read it, letting them repeat

· get them to write
it.

In contrast to traditional methods, here the
children:

· understand the
spoken language, and the context is familiar· don't just chant in a group, but take individual
roles· become confident with the spoken
language before seeing it written· start by
reading whole, meaningful sentences, not with the alphabet· only write things they already can read.

Imagining, as a tool for learning with
understanding:

There is one step that helps children and teachers
remember that the important thing is what is going on in the child's mind, not
what the teacher can see or hear: the first time children get the chance to take
roles, they do so silently, miming the actions. They think the words but don't
say them aloud. While they seem to be doing less, their minds are actually more
engaged, as they actively imagine the whole scene. When they have done this they
get a turn to act with words1.

What has been learnt?

What have we learnt from this experience about an appropriate
role for an International NGO in facilitating collaborative state-community
provision in rural African contexts?

Testing a methodology

It has been shown that:

·Villagers
will make considerable efforts to set up schools in their own villages,
are flexible in taking on new ideas, and capable of managing their schools,
given adequate support and training.

·Unqualified village
teachers can do an effective job, provided they are given appropriate
training, a basic salary, and a sense of being valued.

·Children in such
schools do learn.

In terms of links with the state system:

·Professionals from the state system have made the main contribution
towards the success of the schools in terms of curriculum and methodology.

·Education officials
at provincial and local level were reticent about the innovations, but
through being involved at all stages have been persuaded that the approach is
viable.

·The NGO (in a
project managed by local Malian staff) played a critical role in facilitating
both the village processes and recognition by the state system. Its commitment
to the concept of local ownership (by both villagers and the state) has been a
defining factor.

What are the unresolved issues?

·The
village:The general level of poverty may make it impossible for
villagers to continue paying teachers enough, and it seems unlikely that the
state will take on this responsibility without donor funding.

·Linking into the state
system: The project will need to run six years before it will be
possible to test the long term effectiveness of the PedagogConvergente
in bringing village children to the level of French required to go to
secondary school.

·The ongoing NGO
contribution: Each stage of the developing project will continue to
require support (e.g. for teaching training and curriculum development for each
new set of teachers and as children move to the next class). This is a necessary
commitment to bring one cycle to completion. But there are dilemmas about the
degree of continuing involvement. It would be possible to make a significant
difference to the quality and relevance of the schooling through input on issues
of children's participation, links between school and life, etc, but too much
involvement may reinforce dependence on outsiders.

Costs and sustainability

What costs would the state incur if it took more responsibility
for supporting community schools?29 There are generic developmental
activities, for instance developing local language curricula and materials,
which in the pilot phase have been funded by Save the Children these are costly
but once done will serve a wide range of schools for years to come, so it is
possible to imagine them being absorbed by the state system with short term
donor support.

There is the cost of school buildings. The reliance on local
materials and labour makes it possible to envisage low-cost expansion. Project
staff have tried to negotiate a relaxation of official standards for buildings.
This is a critical issue for the expansion of the village school model, since
village communities cannot meet official criteria without considerable external
funding.30

By keeping the project small enough in the pilot phase to
observe the effects of different inputs, it is now possible to be specific about
what is critical. Experience shows that facilitating costs should not be skimped
(e.g. the salaries of the project staff, essential during the initiating period
and in a less intense form for ongoing support to village management committees
as they come to terms with their role).

All the costs so far relate to setting up, equipping and
managing schools. The key question still is what happens inside them, and
maintaining standards in the long run will depend on schools being brought into
the framework of state provision.

The key roles for the state system revolve around the actual
teaching: teacher qualifications, teacher training, and paying the teachers. The
project has shown that while lack of resources is indeed a major issue,
inflexibility is at least an equal problem. With tactful handling it is possible
to make progress towards more flexible arrangements. The main lesson of the
project is that the really essential costs are paying those adults who make the
education process happen for children. The state needs to reconsider:

· which
adults?· what roles?· being paid how much?

If the state insists the only teachers it employs are fully
qualified, the costs of increasing access in rural areas will remain
prohibitive. Accepting a second tier of village teachers will spread whatever
additional funding can be obtained much further. For village teachers even a
modest state salary would be an improvement on their present state. offering a
security that villagers caught in the trap of poverty cannot guarantee. The
salaries of village facilitators (who in turn activate many villagers who work
voluntarily) is considerably more cost-effective than paying bureaucratic
officials.

The NGO role - where next?

What role does Save the Children envisage it can play in
encouraging a wider application of the lessons of the pilot project? The next
stages are already being planned:

·In Douentza
cercle, Save the Children will seek to put the collaborative arrangement
between the state and communities on a more formalised footing, and seek donor
funding to expand the project to more villages.

·In Mopti region,
Save the Children will build on the reputation which its practical
experience has given it to facilitate discussions between the state system,
donors, and other NGOs on how to link community schools more closely with the
state system.

·Nationally
education policy is set to change in Mali. With the support of major
donors, the Ministry of Education has developed a new framework for basic
education. PRODEC, in which the PedagogConvergente is likely to
receive stronger backing. Save the Children is now well-placed to contribute to
these developments, particularly on how the new approaches can be made
accessible in the Sahel. Plans are being discussed for a workshop bringing
together national, regional and district levels of government with NGOs and
agencies with experience of community schools, to discuss how lessons from these
experiments can be built into the government's national education plan.

·Aross Africa,
there is a need to draw together related experiences of NGOs, both local
and international, who have attempted to cut through the barriers to schooling
for children in remote rural areas.

Editors' Conclusions

· The education system in this
rural district combined many of the worst aspects of poor quality education in
poor communities: schools that are too distant, irrelevant to rural life,
organised in a rigid system unable to adapt to local needs, and teaching in a
language the children do not understand.

· Despite teachers' lack of
formal qualifications, the community schools have been successful through the
exceptional motivation of the whole community, the use of local languages, short
training courses equipping teachers with techniques for child-centred teaching,
and providing a structure for real community participation.

· There is a tension between the
need to involve the state in community schools (to build sustainability and
achieve wider impact), and the possibility that further involvement by the
centralised state will threaten community management of the schools and villager
participation in adapting the curriculum.

· As in other contexts, the
issue of teachers' pay is a fundamental threat to the sustainability of the
programme. Rigid implementation of cost-sharing by parents would threaten the
principle of schools accessible to all, and teachers may not be willing in the
long term to accept considerably lower pay than their counterparts in the state
system.

· From the outset, the aim was
to achieve a wider impact through developing a model programme that could
challenge the rigidity and unresponsiveness of the state education system.
Through the demonstrable success of the community schools, and through seeking
to link with government at different levels throughout the early stages, Save
the Children is now well placed to contribute to the development of the
government's new national education plan.

5 Issa Sidib1998. 'Des bras valides pour
demain? Le travail des enfants au Mali'. Study jointly commissioned by Save the
Children UK, US, Sweden and Canada. It included interviews with 600 children and
their parents. All citations in this section are from this study.

8 These problems are widespread in rural
Africa. See other case studies from Africa, and Obura, A, 1994, assessment for a
possible education programme in Zanzibar. Internal report, Save the Children

9 For equivalent developments in the
neighbouring Sahel state of Burkina Faso, see Boulaye Lallou, 'Burkina Faso:
language reform is no simple matter', in 'UNESCO Sources', Sept. 1998

10 Save the Children staff had themselves
experienced the effectiveness of mother tongue literacy teaching in adult
literacy classes as part of a credit programme.

11 This has been the experience of a major
community schools project run by SCF (US) in southern Mali.

12 Source: Bakary Sogoba, who now works for
SCF (UK) but previously worked for an NGO closely associated with World
Education, and has an overview of NGO activity in general through involvement in
the Groupe Pivot Education de Base.

13 See the Ethiopia case study for more on
issues of decentralisation.

18 Both villages have been designated 'county
towns' in the new moves to decentralise the Malian administrative system. They
will be well placed to act as centres for surrounding villages.

19 Quotations in this section are all from
Kon998

20 A Malian NGO that works on disability
issues, ADD, was commissioned to do a survey of the children with disabilities
in the villages, as a basis for ensuring that they are included.

21 There is still controversy on how to handle
this. The external review recommended a food for work programme for teachers.

22 At a francophone regional meeting in Bamako
on community basic education in 1997, this was the main issue raised by
participants. See Tod, July 1998

23 See Penrose, P, 1998. Cost sharing in
education, Education Research Paper no. 27, Department for International
Development; also Felicty Hill, Cost Sharing, paper commissioned for this
research project

24 Save the Chilrden's experience of school
support activities in the Caribbean offer good examples. See McIvor, C (ed)1999.
The earth in ourhands: children and environmental change in the Caribbean, Save
the Children

25 Ad hoc tests by Marion Molteno and Bakary
Sogoba in November 1998

26 See the India case study. The Indian NGO,
SIDH, offers an example with an impressive record of tackling such issues over a
ten year period.

27 The situation in the Peulh school is
simpler to draw conclusions from than in the Dogon school, because of the many
Dogon languages

28 Kon1998

29 See Tod Oct 1998 for a summary analysis of
project costs, and implications for expansion.

30 Compare the experience of the international
NGO, World Education, which has not challenged official building standards.
Donor funding is recruited for the first year to build 3 classrooms in each
community (at a cost of approximately £26,000). Thereafter it is up to
communities to find their own external funding to continue construction of
subsequent classrooms. World Education offers skills and training support to
those who succeed in doing so. Predicatably, many do not. (Source, Bakary
Sogoba.)